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Rainforest Action Network Names Top Campaigner as New Executive Director

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Lindsey Allen to continue organization’s powerful legacy of protecting rainforests and climate from largest corporate abusers

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

For Immediate Release

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communications manager

SAN FRANCISCO—Today, the Board of Directors at Rainforest Action Network (RAN) announced the appointment of top campaigner Lindsey Allen as Executive Director of the international environmental and human rights organization.

Allen takes the helm of the organization from former Executive Director Rebecca Tarbotton, who died tragically in December of last year. Allen continues RAN’s legacy of bold women leaders going head-to-head with the world’s largest corporations and winning policy solutions that protect people and planet.

“Lindsey Allen is a world-class campaigner with an unmatched track record pressuring and inspiring some of the world’s largest corporations to protect rainforests and their inhabitants,” said Andre Carothers, chairman of RAN’s Board of Directors. “Lindsey is the perfect choice and the only choice for Rainforest Action Network. Under her leadership, RAN will continue to focus on protecting endangered forests, moving the country off of fossil fuels and defending human rights by running victorious corporate campaigns.”

Allen has a lengthy track record of winning critical environmental campaigns against more than a dozen of the largest corporations in the country, including Disney, Nike, Kimberly-Clark and Timberland. Since 2010, Allen has directed RAN’s Forest Program, and was the architect of the largest victory in the organization’s 28-year history—last year’s rainforest-free paper policy signed by Disney, which is transforming everything about the way the entertainment giant and its 3,500 subsidiaries source and use paper.

“I’m honored to take the helm of this powerhouse of an organization. Rainforest Action Network is one of the only groups that works to defend forests and stem climate change by going after the largest corporate environmental offenders, and winning" said Allen, RAN's new Executive Director. "I'm excited to lead RAN in the coming years as we find new ways to inspire people to do what is needed to protect communities and our environment."

In the next month, Allen plans to prioritize the launch of the organization’s largest agribusiness campaign to date, targeting the top 20 snack food corporations that use rainforest-destroying palm oil in their products, and galvanizing more than 75,000 people to take bold action to ensure that President Obama rejects the Keystone XL pipeline.

Prior to working at RAN, Allen was a Senior Forest Campaigner at Greenpeace, where she was a driving force behind the successful Kimberly-Clark campaign, which moved the paper giant to stop pulping endangered forests for products like Kleenex. She also fought to protect the Amazon by helping to secure the historic Cattle Agreement designed to stop international leather and meat companies from buying cattle raised in recently cleared rainforest.

Allen was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, was raised in Vacaville, California, and is an accomplished direct action trainer and zodiac boat driver.